


you grew out of floral wreath

by nobody_home



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Overthinking, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, gay people by the ocean, just a dash of trauma, kinda some purple prose, very self-indulgent, very very mild spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26473501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nobody_home/pseuds/nobody_home
Summary: regular fluff stuff but komaeda has a lisp! sorry if this is in any way inaccurate, i just thought the idea was cute
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 7
Kudos: 100





	you grew out of floral wreath

**Author's Note:**

> title is from cuttlefish by samsa :))

Ibuki grasped at her platter, trying with her might to fight off a ravenous Akane.   
“Come on, can’t I have some extra food?”

Teruteru scoffed, “there are rules for a reason! please sit down…”

He’d gone through all this trouble of cooking up this dinner for them, he never failed to impress Hinata.  
Teruteru was… an interesting guy. Living on the island with him after all this time, they’d never be used to it, but they were still hardly used to each other. 

Akane groaned, sitting down next to Nekomaru and Sonia. Their days were scheduled, the schedule was normal now. Stuck on the island for nearly two months, they moved mechanically through their days, completing chores and tasks like they had a purpose other than biding their time in a dying world. 

Hajime didn’t want to be pessimistic. There, in that part of his mind that he was still grappling with, it fought so hard to be heard.  
It shouted over the mass of Hajime’s thoughts, always angry at something.   
Hajime’s knuckles went white as he clenched his fork, the cool press of metal reeling him back in. Back to the attention of his group of maybe-friends, back to smiling at their messes. Every day felt more normal than the last.   
Every day got kinder.

“Hajime, you’re pretty spaced out.” Mahiru snapped her fingers in front of him.

“Oh, yeah. My apologies, I was just a bit lost in thought.” Mahiru tried to make the small smile he shot her way reassuring, but whether or not she understood was a mystery. She just sighed and continued eating.   
It was almost scarily mundane.

Gundham shouted, jerking Hajime out of his isolated peace.   
“Get away from me! You have no idea the power you may just have unleashed!” Gundham snapped.  
Ah, of course. Komaeda was leaning over his shoulder to look at something. He’d no doubt let slip how tense they all were, how tense they would still be.  
Komaeda backed up immediately, holding his hands out like some sort of defense, his eyes flashing dark.  
“I’m sorry, Gundham, it won’t happen again, I wath a little too curiouth. I’m really, really thorry.”

Souda choked on his food, a smile threatening to break out on his face, like he was in on some joke nobody else knew about. Gundham his his face in his scarf, scoffing.  
“You mortals are so foolish. You mustn’t mess around with something so dangerous without proper caution.”

“Of courthe, thorry. If there’th anyway I can make it up to you, though I doubt thomeone ath worthleth ath me could, pleathe let me know.” Komaeda clasped his hands together, like he was begging Gundham for mercy. Gundham seemed to shrug it off, but most people were either distracted or sitting tensely, like they were waiting for the next terrible thing to happen.   
But Komaeda just sat down, any sheepishness in his eyes now replaced by serenity like usual. 

Maybe he...hadn’t noticed..?

“Hey, Komaeda?” Hajime tried speaking as quietly as possible. The only person between him and Komaeda was Chiaki, who typically sat by apathetically whenever they decided to play their little game of telephone.

“Yeth, Hinata-kun?” 

There it was again. There’s no way he’d realised. God, Hajime felt awkward, gears turning in his brain as he tried to think of how to say it.

“Oi, Komaeda, are you feeling alright?”

But before he could, Hajime was… of course… interrupted by Souda…

“What makth you athk that? I’m doing fine!”

“You’re just, well-“ Kazuichi coughed into his hand, “talking a bit weird, that’s all.”

Hajime winced. He could’ve, probably should’ve, put that more delicately, but trust Kazuichi to be straightforward, he guessed.

“Talking weird..? That doeth—“ Komaeda frowned, finally realising.  
And ended up repeating ‘doesn’t’ to himself, face furrowed in concentration.   
After maybe the twentieth time, he stood up, still that hyper-focused look on his face.   
“Komaeda, what are you doing?” Teruteru asked.

Hajime put away the sight of Teruteru’s hand reaching to a knife.

“I jutht—just, need th-th-th...a bit of air. My apologies.” Komaeda stressed the ‘s’, forcing it into more of a z. 

Hajime was definitely worried now, watching as Komaeda walked down the stairs with his fists clenched stiffly as his sides. Kazuichi just shrugged and kept eating but Hajime let his thoughts take a different turn-away from them, and more on…

Komaeda paced outside the hotel, hand wringing through his hair as he stressed his whispered repetitions. This never happened, why now? Why couldn’t he just get back to how he’d been doing it the past nearly two decades?

“Komaeda? You alright?” Hajime peeked his head out of the doorway, startling Komaeda just enough to make a curse slip out.

“Hinata-kun! My apologies, I was merely a bit overwhelmed. I’ll feel better, thank you for checking up on me.”   
There was the pressed z sound again. Hajime’s leg bounced.

“Komaeda, we aren’t going to judge you for anything, you know that right?”

Komaeda bristles, looking up at Hajime owlishly. The whispers under his breath were silenced as they looked across at each other. Hajime held his breath, waiting for Komaeda to say something instead of just gazing at him like a deer in headlights with his mercury eyes. 

And he said nothing. But a smile broke out on his face, slowly growing bigger and then he laughed, a wheezing cackle that started small and got bigger, more and more forced, the way he always laughed.  
Like there was nobody left in the world and he had nothing else to say, nothing else worth doing. 

All Hajime could do was stand there, lost in whether he had done something wrong or if this was just Komaeda, the way he was.   
And his wheezing, hacking laughter never lasted long, but it felt like an eternity, listening to something so devoid of any real happiness, now more than ever.  
He wiped tears from his eyes, grinning at Hajime.

“That’s a really good joke, Hinata-kun.” The stressed z weighed down on Hajime like an anchor dragging him to the depths. Had Komaeda’s eyes always looked this deep, this dulled? 

“It’s not a joke, Komaeda.” Hajime said, deadpan. Crossing his fingers in his mind that Komaeda wouldn’t interpret that as another joke, that the message would be clear enough. 

He stood slack for a second, grasping for some way to reply to Hajime. 

“You don’t have to be th-so kind to me, Hinata-kun. I appreth-appreciate it, but I know my place.” Something about the smile Komaeda gave him made part of him ache, something so small and something so sad.

“Please, don’t start. You aren’t below us, stop talking like you are. We aren’t going to judge you for little things that you can’t help, we’re all trying to get along here and respect each other.”   
He felt exhaustion tugging at his mind, begging for him to groan or to stomp through his frustration. The patience he needed to have grew on impossible but he sat with it anyways, waiting on Komaeda like he always tried to.

“I’m grateful, Hinata-kun, but—“

“No, Komaeda, please, just listen to me for once. Take your time but we do care, at least some of us do. Okay?” 

Komaeda looked at the ground, biting the inside of his cheek. After a few seconds, he muttered something too quietly for Hajime to hear.

“What was that?”

“Okay.” 

Hajime nodded, thinking for a few seconds if he could even say anything else, then walked back into the hotel. He sighed, shoulders relaxing as he walked back up to the dining hall.

“It’s okay, right?” Souda asked him. Hajime nodded, his head in his hands as he ate silently, ignoring everyone the rest of the night probably for the sake of his sanity. 

One plate was left uneaten and Hajime didn’t know if it made him feel relieved or guilty. 

Hajime’s feet kicked sand around as he shuffled down to sit next to Komaeda on the beach. The sun had started rising, the horizon line well defined and vibrant against the body of water that surrounded them. 

“More early mornings, huh?” Hajime glanced over at Komaeda.  
He could be like a wild animal sometimes, Hajime had to try to be as innocuous as he could. 

It was no mystery how shaken nightmares could leave them, it was no secret that the quiet early mornings were all they knew to do when they were shaken from their sleep.   
The little time they’d spent in a waking nightmare, for all it was they’d done…

Hajime thought about it.  
He thought, as the waves brushed his toes in the sand on the shoreline, how easy it would be to just let himself go.  
Let his body fall, be whisked away into the cold of the ocean.   
He wondered sometimes if it would make any difference.

If he would just continue to float, tension hanging in the air like a sandal the waves had stolen when he fell.

He wondered if his skin would burn, lying there as the sun crawled into the sky, or if he’d gotten enough scars to last a lifetime. 

He thought about letting himself be carried, taken off to the world by the current and never needing to think again.

And Komaeda’s fingers crawled through the sand to Hajime’s, finding some comforting place between the sky and the sea.  
Hajime felt his heart sigh.  
He knew he was just as tired as Komaeda was. His body felt heavier every time he started the morning with a scream, like he was losing his control. 

But they all knew. They all understood such a simple feeling. 

“The thky ith pretty today.” Komaeda mumbled. He winced, with such anger and frustration and such listlessness. He opened his mouth to say something more, but it closed just as fast as he gave in, just a little, his shoulders slouching.

“Yeah. It’s very pretty.” Hajime agreed, leaning back. He craned his neck, staring up at the clouds in the purple splotched sky, wondering if he’d ever seen it like this before and knowing he never hadn’t, but also knowing it wouldn’t stop feeling beautiful.

And maybe he was some sort of hopeless romantic, as Komaeda kept their fingers entangled, sitting in the sand while the sun rose. Maybe he was a bit cliched, thoughts wandering as his eyes shaped the clouds as he saw fit.   
The waves made a gentle washing sound, dragging the sand with it’s current.

Some distant memory of Nekomaru’s half death knocked on the little door in his head, asking maybe, maybe just revisit it, and he wished he could soundproof that wall he’d built but he knew where he was, who he could be as long as he wanted to. Komaeda’s fingers were cold, but they were soft, he wouldn’t let go. 

If Hajime was anything he was air headed, and if Komaeda was anything he was gravity, pulling his head away from the clouds like a child rescuing their kite from a strong wind, and Hajime trusted Komaeda, he was surprised but he trusted him, looking at his wispy hair and that weirdly melancholic peace he had in his eyes, in his soft smile…  
If Hajime were a kite held onto by Komaeda then he trusted deeply, he wouldn’t get stuck in some tree and left, he trusted he wouldn’t need to be alone unless that’s what he wanted. 

“I, uh… I’m thorry-sorry for being...like this.” Komaeda muttered.

“It’s okay, Nagito.” Hajime brushed his thumb over Komaeda’s knuckles.   
Hoping to give him something meaningful, maybe.

Hajime didn’t think, often, about the time he spent worrying.   
As he sat, worrying and worrying over the boy sitting next to him, he realised maybe that door in his mind was better off closed most of the time too.

Maybe he should just sit, fingers intertwined with Komaeda’s, smiling as the sun rose over the ocean, maybe he should just let himself be happy.

“Hajime…”

“Hm?” 

Komaeda rarely called him by his first name despite Hajime’s insistence that he call him by his name because surely they were friends and when Hajime looked over Komaeda almost seemed scared of something. His fingers clenched tighter on Hajime’s hand, his eyes darting away like he’d never said anything at all.

“Hey, Nagito?” 

Hajime didn’t think Nagito could get any tenser, but still he bristled, losing grip on Hajime’s hand.

And Hajime didn’t quite know what he was doing, but he’d leaned in too fast to feel prepared and he was definitely sure Nagito flinched when their lips made contact and his brain set off like a shockwave thinking he needed to pull away and that he’d definitely fucked this up and there was definitely no going back but he tried to pull away and Nagito just followed him, the two of them crashing onto the sand in some clumsy, impromptu kiss that neither of them expected to have wanted as much as they did.

Nagito smiled down at him and said, “you’re tho pretty,” and Hajime felt his face burn.

And maybe Hajime was reading too much into things but he could’ve sworn that Nagito didn’t wince, he could’ve sworn that Nagito just kept smiling down at him like Hajime had shaped the world just for Nagito.

And maybe Hajime shouldn’t, but maybe Hajime took it as a sign.

That they helped each other, that they could fit, that they could be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully you enjoyed it !


End file.
